


the torn-up road

by batwomanvevo



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, References to Suicide, Spoilers for Can You Hear Me?, Trauma, mortifying ordeal of being known etc.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-10
Updated: 2020-02-10
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:08:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22647670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/batwomanvevo/pseuds/batwomanvevo
Summary: I want to tell you this story without having to confess anything
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor & Yasmin Khan
Comments: 10
Kudos: 74





	the torn-up road

**Author's Note:**

> some people….write fic at 2am instead of working on their homework due in the morning….to cope

When she thought about it, Yaz remembered the road, the cracked asphalt, the scrape of it under her feet as she walked, staring at her shoes. The further she got from home, the emptier it was, fewer and fewer drivers to gawk at her before speeding away. The empty land around her offered no shelter, nowhere to hide. When she began her walk, there had been a physical thrumming in her chest, something dancing between panic and excitement and a deep, howling hurt. In time, it slowed down, and faded, and then she just felt hollow. No destination, no tears, no dramatics, nothing but one foot in front of the other, until she knew to stop. She wasn’t sure how she would know- just that she should, somehow, and as long as she kept moving, she would somewhere reach an end. 

* * *

In the- forest, maybe, or not, or something else, something cold and wrong, wrong, wrong. The silence, tangible, filling her ears like smoke. She thinks for a minute that she might be dead. Is this what dead looks like? She can hardly breathe through the terror. Alone in the dark. She calls and no one answers, no one there to listen-

Later, she tells Ryan she was scared. The words don’t feel full enough. Ryan sits beside her, steady and solid, and doesn’t try to say the right thing. “I thought I was dead,” she says, and the tears spill over. 

* * *

Yaz isn’t stupid. “Another time” means “don’t ask again,” and she supposes she can understand that. Not everyone likes to go home, or has a nice home to return to. Not everyone wants to talk about it. Still, there’s a dam broken. Before, she had been easily distracted from her curiosity, but now it feels like the elephant in every room. It doesn’t help that the Doctor seems to have slowed down the show- five planets, but each of them peaceful, and the Doctor herself less energetic, less excited. She smiles tightly, deflects questions, and does more maintenance than the TARDIS has ever seemed to need before. 

She had given a few words- dropped names, more like. Gallifrey, Kasterborous, Time Lord. They sound impressive, but lacking context, may as well be gibberish. Yaz has never heard them mentioned on their travels, never seen them displayed in any museums or written in any books. They don’t mean anything, except to say, I come from somewhere. I have a people. 

Yaz knows she shouldn’t pry but she wants to pry, and she thinks that might be a good thing sometimes. 

* * *

50p aside, Yaz hadn’t wanted to end her day in handcuffs. She went with the cop. It felt like the entire world should have shifted, but at school the next day, nothing had changed. Around her, students chatted, laughed, moaned about homework, shoved her against the wall as they passed. It felt utterly surreal. It felt like anger curling low in her stomach, like resentment burning behind her eyes.

At home, Sonya stuttered around her, never meeting her eye. Wanting to talk but not wanting to say anything, to acknowledge that there was anything to talk about. Wanting to reach out but not wanting to touch.

* * *

Sometimes, the Doctor looks angry. Not the anger when she’s lecturing or monologuing at the climax of some harrowing adventure- a quieter anger. Thinner. Spread out. A sharpness to her smile, an edge of frustration beneath cheerful exposition, a roll of her eyes when she thinks no one’s looking. 

It’s well hidden, and well compensated for, so it takes Yaz a while to look closer, to notice on purpose. But she recognizes it, the irritability, the tendency to snap. It looks to her like a feeling she remembers, the anger that lives in isolation. In watching your friends laugh while your world is in pieces. In watching everyone else carry on with their lives and hating them for it because how can they act normal when normal doesn’t exist anymore? When absolutely everything is wrong- but you’re the only one who can see it. 

* * *

“Yesterday…” She fidgeted, hands shoved into her pockets. “It was sort of a hard day for me. An anniversary.”

The Doctor paused for a moment, hands stilling on the console. “Not a good one, I assume?”

"A complicated one,” Yaz said. She suddenly felt nauseous. Too too full of things to say, and none of the right words to say them with.

* * *

In her dreams, the road is wide, the wind is cold, and no one drives by at all. Sometimes she thinks she can feel the policewoman staring at her back, but there’s no one there. In her dreams, she walks all alone for miles, until the road tips off the end of the earth, and she wants to stop, to say that she’s changed her mind, but there’s no one there to listen. 

* * *

“I know that something’s wrong,” she says.

The Doctor looks up from the console, opens her mouth, but Yaz continues before she can interrupt. “You don’t have to tell me. You can, if you want- you don’t have to do anything. I’m not accusing. But I just want you to know that I noticed. And I want to help, and I don’t know how, and if you figure it out, you can let me know. I know it’s probably not simple. It usually isn’t. But just...yeah.” She trails off, running out of steam. “I see you. That’s all.”

The Doctor looks down again. Awkward silence, just a beat too long, and then, quietly, “Sure, Yaz. Thanks.”

* * *

Days later, the Doctor clears her throat, after Ryan and Graham have left the room.

“Do you know that feeling,” she starts, quickly, her voice just a little too high, “when you’re talking to someone, or someone’s talking at you, or something like that, and you just suddenly can’t stand to hear another word they say?”

“Yeah,” Yaz says, like letting out a long breath. After a moment of silence, she offers her hand. The Doctor takes it. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> this is literally nothing but i havent posted fic in six years so im still proud of it lmao


End file.
